Kthulhu

My first exposure to the BW fable was a rather creepy trailer before the horrendous "horror" film Event Horizon. The trailer of course protrayed it as the "true' story of some folks lost in the woods and this is the footage found and released by the investigators a year later. This made my Skepti-Sense� tingle and I decided to look it up. The first thing I found was this which in those days made no reference to the movie and was portrayed in a very realistic/documentary type way. Still I pressed on to get confirmation that it was just a movie (which didn't take me too long).

Because of the lengths to which the creators went in trying to make this appear to be a real event I decided to just go with the flow on opening night. I allowed myself to visualize my friends and myself in their situation having been lost in the woods at night myself several times while camping. Because of this I was able to sympathize with the characters, vulgarities and all. I was also able to rationalize their not following the stream (and other seemingly dimwitted things they did) as evidence the witch/fear was screwing with their minds.

**---------SPOILER ALERT----------**

For some reason the interview in the beginning about the children being killed and having them stand in a corner stuck with me throughout the film. When I saw Mike standing in the corner seconds before the screaming and the camarea being dropped I just about shit my pants.

I'm not a fan of "horror" usually because it's been less psychological and more blood and gore. In fact more humerous than truely scary. This film somehow sucked me in and proved to me that the monster imagined is much more scary than the monster paraded plainly before you on-screen no matter how grotesque.

~The Thing That Should Not Be

EDIT Me make english more comper.. coprehen.. croperehen... more understandable.

wonkothesane

Ditto. Not everyone made that connection, and the people I know who didn't - like my ex-wife, who doesn't often notice little details in movies like I do - it just wasn't as scary to them.

I also found the part where the girl finds the...I not sure...some fingers or other body part wrapped in the bandana (or was it a shirt?) and sticks pretty disturbing...

My ex-wife's boyfriend actually let my 3, 5, and 7 year-old kids watch this on tape! My 5-year old played it over and over again for days, even though it scared the hell out of him - esp the very next night when we both had to, literally, climb a flight of stairs in an old run-down house with just a flashlight (we really did) and he was *literally* shaking and his teeth were chattering...but a few days later he pronounced it "not real, just a movie"...

My three-year old daughter however, has a good "bullshit detector", and when someone made a joke about the Blair Witch being outside - just after they watched the movie - and my two oldest kids ran, she just ran to the window and said "No she's not! She not real!"...

I agree, and found it funny how this movie came out durring the remake of "The Haunting", because I found the original scary because of what you *don't* see, and heard the remake had a big special effects ending...so I didn't see it...

And I might get flamed for this - but I was *literally* on the edge of my seat for "Signs" - (SPOILERS!) EVEN THOUGH as an ex-astronomy major I found the basic science very bad, and as an atheist I found the re-conversion at the end very disapointing (I liked the guy better as a bitter atheist who lost his wife, like me, and I liked his speech about there being two kinds of people...the majority who see "signs" everywhere, and the few realistic percent who just don't - and I loved the "There will be no more damned praying in this house!" scene...) BUT the _way_ it was filmed - never quite seeing the monsters/aliens - scared the crap out of me - and I thought that the scariest part of the whole movie was when the light gets knocked out in the basement, and all you hear is banging and fighting, and have no idea what's going on...If I'd *had* a valium after that movie, I'd have taken it! I could not sleep at *all* with the lights off that night. And I found the ending very *cathartic*, just 'cause there's always some guy that you just wanna grab the Slugger and "swing wide" at! (Like my ex's bf...for example...) Some larger-than-life enemy that you just want to bring down to *your* level, and pummel (probably like some folks feel about bin Laden, or Saddam Husain - or even the U.S. ...)

You know though, "Poltergeist" was a big SFX film, and it's still pretty scary...(yes, my kids have seem that one two, and now want to see "Signs", but they literally live surrounded by cornfields, so...I dunnno...)

- bryce

dangin

Make it a double feature with "Children of the Corn". You know, He wants you too Malachai.

Shadowy Man

Teeth.

id.s

When the tent was shaking the movie became absurd. I mean, get a fucking big stick and wait in a tree for the idiot and smack the back of his head into a new dimension. If it was a bear shaking their tent then it would tear through it and take care of you. If it was a man then take care of the body and move on. If it was the blair witch then the sequal would have never appeared, much to our monetary relief. As P.T. Barnum said about suckers, not once but twice you people got caught by this horrid film. Instead of something real, we're left with walking in circles, running at night with flashlites and bouncing cameras to stimulate our fear factor? I think people are starved for something real in their life and just imagine what fear can be in life instead of the actual "No (KNOW) Fear" factor. This was a poor excuse for theft from your pockets. I give it a NR as a Non Ratable attempt at moviemaking. If you were afraid of this movie, then you've forgotten the purpose of laughter. It can't even fool a 3 year old as wonkothesame says..